The thing that works, in my experience, is where employees/founders have pre-existing personal ties to other areas (e.g. I'll recruit personally at MIT for my startup, and probably up in Seattle, and possibly via some connections in Cambridge, Berlin, and Montreal); it's a lot easier to bridge the cultural issues that way. Then, ideally, relocate to where the startup is based (i.e. Mountain View, Ground Zero), but allowing wfh/remote or setting up an office if there happens to be a key person or a group of people there.
